大量的食肉动物种群在全球范围内受到人类影响的威胁。更好的保护可以使食肉动物受益,共同发生的物种,和他们居住的生态系统。食肉动物和人类的关系,然而,在人类活动较多的地区并不总是一致的,通常是通过人类对有蹄类动物猎物的影响来介导的。为了测试关于猎物丰度和人类如何影响食肉动物发生的假设,密度,和日常活动模式,我们评估了老虎-猎物-人类的时空模式基于相机捕获数据在h春自然保护区,中国老虎修复的核心地区。我们的研究区域在夏季和冬季存在季节性不同的人为干扰。考虑到人类和环境协变量,我们使用N混合物模型来预测有蹄类动物的相对丰度。我们使用占用模型和N混合物模型中的猎物相对丰度模型来估计老虎的空间分布。最后,我们使用核密度估计来估计老虎和猎物的时间活动模式,以测试老虎之间的时间回避,猎物,猎物和人类。我们的结果表明,与人类有关的活动在不同尺度和不同方式上降低了猎物的相对丰度,但是跨物种,猎物的相对丰富直接增加了老虎的占有率。夏季和冬季,老虎的占有率与梅花鹿的相对丰度呈正相关。黄昏和夜间活动的老虎显然也与野猪和ro的活动同步。然而,老虎暂时避免了人类活动,而没有直接的空间回避。我们的研究通过人类对猎物种群的影响来支持人类对老虎的影响。保护工作可能不仅针对人类对捕食者的干扰,也是为了缓解人类与食肉动物的冲突。
Large carnivore populations are globally threatened by human impacts. Better protection could benefit carnivores, co-occurring species, and the ecosystems they inhabit. The relationship between carnivores and humans, however, is not always consistent in areas of high human activities and is often mediated through the effects of humans on their ungulate prey. To test assumptions regarding how prey abundance and humans affect carnivore occurrence, density, and daily activity patterns, we assessed tiger-prey-human spatiotemporal patterns based on camera-trapping data in Hunchun Nature Reserve, a promising core area for
tiger restoration in
China. Our study area contained seasonally varying levels of human disturbance in summer and winter. We used N-mixture models to predict the relative abundance of ungulate prey considering human and environmental covariates. We estimated
tiger spatial distribution using occupancy models and models of prey relative abundance from N-mixture models. Finally, we estimated temporal activity patterns of tigers and prey using kernel density estimates to test for temporal avoidance between tigers, prey, and humans. Our results show that human-related activities depressed the relative abundance of prey at different scales and in different ways, but across species, the relative abundance of prey directly increased
tiger occupancy.
Tiger occupancy was strongly positively associated with the relative abundance of sika deer in summer and winter. The crepuscular and nocturnal tigers also apparently synchronized their activity with that of wild boar and roe deer. However, tigers temporally avoided human activity without direct spatial avoidance. Our study supports the effects of humans on tigers through human impacts on prey populations. Conservation efforts may not only target human disturbance on predators, but also on prey to alleviate human-carnivore conflict.